A relatively common question raised with our support team relates to the PCB layers and the view which is controlled by the Layers Bar.
Users often toggle a layer on/off to view an underlying layer, particularly to view the paste mask. This is unnecessary if you change the layer order in the Design Technology.
An important note is that the layer order when working in the design editor does not affect the PCB stackup. This is controlled by the Gerber plot layer naming.
As an example, this PCB does not display the paste mask opening. It is selected, but as the openings are smaller than the top copper pads, they are not visible due to the viewing order assigned.
In the Design Technology <Shift>+T, and then on the Layers tab, you can change the displayed order.
Here is the current order and the displayed order is shown by the green arrow:
Selecting the Top Solder Mask and using the [Up] button, it can be moved above the Top Copper layer as shown:
The resulting PCB Editor view displaying all the layers is now:
Full details of this and customising the PCB Editor can be found here.
Note that if you started your design using a standard design technology file, it will not contain the solder or paste mask layers in the layer view. These will be auto-generated when producing the manufacturing plots.
To add a layer to the layers list/bar, follow this article, which covers the solder mask layer in detail. The paste mask will be similar.
You may also be interested in controlling the amount of paste applied when using a wide range of pad sizes; this is detailed here.
Within the Engineer subscription, you have complete control of the pad parameters and masks as detailed in this article when producing fiducials.
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